


Tablesaw

by PaxVobis



Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Blood and Torture, Charles Is A Bad Dude, Gen, Gore, Hamburger Time, Implied/Referenced Torture, Mordhaus, One Shot, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 03:20:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10913256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaxVobis/pseuds/PaxVobis
Summary: Oneshot - Nathan descends into the dungeons in search of Charles, and finds something more of him than he bargained for.





	Tablesaw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eostara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eostara/gifts).



Compared to the boys’ living spaces, Offdensen’s quarters were upwards – a roost above them, a belfry, where he could be a constant presence over them waiting to descend at the barest hint of trouble.  There was another realm that he commanded, however, underneath that controlled by the band - as above so below.

When Offdensen was not in the belfry, he was in the belly.  Nathan didn’t know where he went.  Sometimes there was a control room mentioned; he only barely knew where that would be.  Below.  Like the stomach of the beast, of Mordhaus, black and vile beneath them.  On this night, a night when he had ascended to the office to bang on the door and yell in abusive slurs for attention, Charles proved himself to be below.  The only other place he could be.  Thus, Nathan descended, choosing to take the stone stairs opposite to the way he’d gone upwards.

Beneath, the stones that built the foundations of Mordhaus were stained with mould and slime, trickling water, and Nathan, as the air grew colder, gradually realised that he did not think this was the way to the control room.  He pulled out his phone, activating the flashlight, to see his way through the cold gloom in its stripped white light.  There were corridors, his hand drawn through a cobweb in the corner of a doorway, the door locked with a huge iron latch, and there were grills of twisted black iron, covering holes that dropped away into cold nothing in the dark.  The smell of rotting bodies, bloated in water, far below.  Nathan had wandered into a dungeon rather than a control room.  In the cold and dark, he snorted softly, the sound echoing away over the wet stones.  The fantasy of a castle, _real_ brutal, but more decorative than anything.

His curiosity was drawn by a side corridor of locked doors, but locked from the outside.  The band’s advanced locking systems mounted on the walls and covered by perspex shells looked out of place in the Medieval grim of the thing, and – curious to see if he could – Nathan lifted the case of one and pressed his hand to it.  Sure enough, the lock clunked and he could push open the door easily.  Good.  There should be no door in Mordhaus that he could not open, even – he considered with a quiet violence – that to Offdensen’s living quarters.  But that was a complaint for another board meeting.

The room inside was pitch black.  Flashing the phone light around the inside, he could see little but the steel arms of some sort of apparatus, crudely welded seams, and moved forward to investigate.  Longer than Nathan stood tall, and this room smelt _bad_.  The apparatus consisted of a frame, like a table, made of steel and welded together, with a gap down its middle.  At its foot and head were welded leather cuffs, and part-way along, a second vertical frame that looked intended to be pushed.  Below the table, machinery – gears – tracks – his light falling on a huge circular saw, held between the arms of the vertical frame and sticking up inside the gap at the foot of the table.  Running his eyes over from a distance, this was how it looked to work: you pulled the cord at the base of the saw, and the saw started.  Then you could push it along the tracks and down the table using the vertical frame.  He thought one, maybe two people could push the saw, while one oversaw the engine, and in that way they could move it despite its considerable weight and whatever form they attempted to move it through.

Nathan was already running his fingers over the dried black blood on the edge of the saw when he realised it was supposed to be a human.  He gave a short snort of surprise, pulling his hand back abruptly.  It didn’t look, from the splatters he lit up on the table, like they had made it through the whole person.  Perhaps only through the groin before it had been stopped and pulled back.  But they hadn’t cleaned it.  And they had... sawed through... someone... who had... who had - -

“Nathan.”

Nathan started, turning quickly where he was crouched beside the table to look behind him.  In the doorway stood Offdensen, a bright light behind him – of course he’d known how to work the switch.  Nathan lit up his features, a subtle frown playing across them, with his phone light to a wince from the manager, his glasses flashing back at Nathan.

“What are you doing down here?” Charles asked, raising a hand to shield his face, and Nathan stood up.

“Nothing.  Looking for you,” the singer rumbled, and Charles peered at him around his hand, his gaze narrow and watchful behind his glasses.

“Well, I’m here now.  I’ll see you upstairs, if you like,” he offered, and held the door open further for Nathan.  The frontman stalked towards him, casting a final glance back over the saw, but brushed it off with a grunt and a toss of his hair as he passed back into the corridor.  Offdensen closed the door behind him, watching his movements closely.  “No reason to stay down here.  You’ll, ah.  Catch your death of chill.”

“Don’t use that word,” growled Nathan, “Fucks me up.”  But he lead back towards the surface anyway, his gut cold and unsettled by what he’d seen.  Charles was close at his heels, his wingtips echoing on the flagstones.

“Yes, sorry.  Ah, slipped my mind.  You’ll catch a chill, anyhow.”

“Whatever.”  Just so long as he didn’t use it.  Nathan knew what he’d seen, wanted no reminders - wanted to live oblivious to how Charles, a zealot, got things done.  He got them done.  That was all that mattered.


End file.
